"Small fry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... without my saying a word of it, as I know you trust to no gazette but mine. Last Thursday se'nnight our great expedition departed from Portsmouth—and soon separated; lord Anson with the great ships to lie before Brest, and Commodore Howe,(895) our naval hero, with the transports and a million of small fry on the secret enterprise. At one o'clock on Thursday night, alias Friday morning a cutter brought advice that on Sunday night the transports had made land in Concalle Bay, near St. Maloes, had disembarked with no ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... branches, sometimes with a few entire leaves and bladders. Its benefactors, bumblebees and butterflies, with their highly developed aesthetic taste, are attracted from afar by this pleasing flower, whose acute, curved spur filled with nectar may not be drained by small fry, to whom the hairy throat is ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... you do or not," returned Hal quietly. "You are pretty small fry in this game, Nicolas, and I'm not afraid of you. Remember, if anything should happen to me, you'll have the German government on your trail, and then what would you do ...
— The Boy Allies in the Balkan Campaign - The Struggle to Save a Nation • Clair W. Hayes
... ivory paper-cutter, and the lower mandible, differently from every other bird, is an inch and a half longer than the upper. In a lake near Maldonado, from which the water had been nearly drained, and which, in consequence, swarmed with small fry, I saw several of these birds, generally in small flocks, flying rapidly backwards and forwards close to the surface of the lake. They kept their bills wide open, and the lower mandible half buried ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... appetite, consuming hundreds of insects in the course of a day. Nor does he confine his attention to flies and gnats and mosquitoes and such small fry. He catches what he can. A large dragon fly will even gorge himself on one of the large-sized butterflies, and one has been seen calmly chewing away ...
— The Insect Folk • Margaret Warner Morley
... "that red silk dress will break the hearts of all the feminine small fry at the party. You'd break their spirits, too, if you wore the slippers. Don't do it, Sara. Leave them one ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... small fry mingle freely with the legislators in the open, in the hotels and cafes ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... its Carlyles, but it never much respects the Carlyles of other ages. We have our Ferrero and our H. G. Wells, to say nothing of such small fry as Faguets, Marinetti, e tutti quanti. They are people who have something for their own age and nothing for any other, and their own age is pretty sure to prefer them to any great man it may produce but fail ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... were of the first marriage, a period in his history which Mr Wentworth himself had partly forgotten; and the troop of children at present in the Hall nursery were quite beyond the powers of any grown-up brother to recognise or identify. It was vaguely understood that "the girls" knew all the small fry by head and name, but even the Squire himself was apt to get puzzled. With such a household, and with an heir impending over his head like Jack, it may be supposed that Mr Wentworth's anxiety to get his younger boys disposed of was great. Cuthbert and Guy were arrows in the hand of the ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... wut she wants is a doer"? Fer the matter o' thet, it 's notorous in town Thet her own representatives du her quite brown. But thet 's nothin' to du with it; wut right hed Palfrey To mix himself up with fanatical small fry? Warn't we gettin' on prime with our hot an' cold blowin', Acondemnin' the war wilst we kep' it agoin'? We 'd assumed with gret skill a commandin' position, On this side or thet, no one could n't tell wich one, So, wutever side wipped, ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... complete gate, shutting up the little bay, and leaving neither egress nor ingress for any fish that could not squeeze itself through the meshes. These last had been made very large; for Ossaroo did not care for the "small fry." ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... late afternoons, harrying the rabbits from their shallow forms, and the hawks that sweep and swing above them, are not there from any mechanical promptings of instinct, but because they know of old experience that the small fry are about to take to seed gathering and the water trails. The rabbits begin it, taking the trail with long, light leaps, one eye and ear cocked to the hills from whence a coyote might descend upon them at any moment. Rabbits are a foolish people. They do ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... soaring and watching their chance. The halibut, the cod, the porpoise, and the finback whale had followed the little ones out of the deep; and there was confusion worse confounded, and chaos came again in the hours of wild excitement that followed the advent of the small fry, for each and all in sea and air were bent upon the ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... Besides the small fry, the swallowers of swords and the grimace makers, real performances took place on the green. There was a circus of women, ringing from morning till night with a magnificent peal of all sorts of instruments—psalteries, drums, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... bigger as my tumb, but always preserving the uniformity of dress, and colour of the umbrella or parasol. Sometimes the breeze, on opening a corner, would strike the stern most of a set composed in this manner of small fry, and stagger the little things, getting beneath their tiny umbrellas, and fairly blowing them out of the line, and ruffling their ribbons and finery, as if they had been tulips bending and shaking their leaves before it. ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... put it in, too. And after vindicating Grady to their satisfaction, they'd take his word for law and the gospel more than ever. In this sort of a scrape you want to hit as high as you can, strike the biggest man who will let you in his office. It's the small fry that make the trouble. I guess that's true 'most everywhere. I know the general manager of a railroad is always an easier chap to get on with than ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster
... There's a senator of the United States, three members of the House of Representatives, the Ambassador of a European court, the Governor of a Chinese province, a Japanese Prince and a dozen big politicians from as many states, to say nothing of the small fry." ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... sensation at home and abroad, and immediately won, and has since retained, an immense popularity. He was at the height of his fame, but poor, as always. In 1846 he published "The Literati," critical comments on the writers of the day, in which the literary small fry were mercilessly condemned and ridiculed. This naturally made Poe a host of enemies. One of these, Thomas Dunn English, published an abusive article attacking the author's character, whereupon Poe sued him for libel and obtained two hundred and ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... was heard to stop at the door, and the dreaded lady and her niece Clara alighted, each with parcels in their hands; presents, no doubt, to the small fry who had climbed up to the window to see ...
— Aunt Mary • Mrs. Perring
... the gaming-house door; for you are to know, my good reader, if you have never been a man of wit and pleasure about town, that, as the voracious pike lieth snug under some weed before the mouth of any of those little streams which discharge themselves into a large river, waiting for the small fry which issue thereout, so hourly, before the door or mouth of these gaming-houses, doth Mr. Snap, or some other gentleman of his occupation, attend the issuing forth of the small fry of young gentlemen, to whom they deliver little slips of parchment, containing ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... searching the bushes with their keen flat eyes for the least stir. Since everything had to come down to the river sooner or later to drink, they could have had no better point of vantage. Every man had a gun in his canoe, but ammunition is expensive on the Swan River, and for small fry, musk-rat, duck, fool-hen, or rabbit, they still used the ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... short, the soul in its body sunk Like a blade sent home to its scabbard. We descended, I preceding; Crossed the court with nobody heeding; All the world was at the chase, 740 The courtyard like a desert-place, The stable emptied of its small fry; I saddled myself the very palfrey I remember patting while it carried her, The day she arrived and the Duke married her. And, do you know, though it's easy deceiving Oneself in such matters, I can't help ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... Socinian because it was so much used in Locke's time: it is used in our own day by the small fry, the unlearned clergy and their immediate followers, as a term of reproach for all Unitarians. I suspect they have a kind of liking for the word; it sounds like so sinful. The learned clergy and the higher laity know better: they know that the bulk of ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... three or four pounds weight each. Then there was nearly a score of the vermilion-and-orange-dyed red mullet, brilliant little fellows; a few small-sized mackerel; a few gurnard, a basketful of little flat fish, and a number of small fry, which had to be dealt with gingerly, for among them were several of the poisonous little weevels, whose sharp back fins and spines make ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... so of muddy water and a formidable fleet of old hulks, disreputable barges and "small fry broad-horns," lay Algiers, graceless itself as the uninviting foreground; looking out contemplatively from its squalor at the inspiring view of Nouvelle Orleans, with the freighters, granaries and steamboats, three stories high, floating past; comparing its ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... bay, by father's quay, there was a deep, shelving bank, where, at the end of the summer, came shoals of young cod-fish and other small fry; and there we boys carried on our fishing, each with his linen thread and bent pin. We cut the fish open, and hung them over the drying poles standing in the field over by our own warehouse for the preparation ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... and keep out of this, small fry!" Hanlon sneered, and was rewarded with a hard blow on the side of his head that made him wince. But ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... separate me from my Secretary and confidante, little Baranello, whom I brought with me from Salzburg. She is an Italian, and, unlike most of them, as faithful as a dog. A connection of the Ruffo family, princes and dukes that gave the world more than one pope, the small fry Saxon nobility hate her, and George knows that he can't corrupt Lucretia by his paltry presents ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... means of conveyance they have, east and west, and north and south; and now the manufacturers only need the cultivation of true principles of taste among the whole riband- weaving population. For taste is a rare article, and many draughts of small fry must be made before one leviathan salmon can be caught. Great advances have been made recently in the production of the best kinds of ribands. A specimen produced by subscription for the Hyde Park Exhibition of 1851, proved that Coventry ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... it was one of her progeny who blasted Maria's reputation by announcing that the grand visitors had been for her lodger. After that Maria dropped back into her old obscurity and Martin began to notice the respectful manner in which he was regarded by the small fry of the neighborhood. As for Maria, Martin rose in her estimation a full hundred per cent, and had the Portuguese grocer witnessed that afternoon carriage-call he would have allowed Martin an additional three-dollars-and-eighty-five-cents' worth ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... the Reichstag a host of small fry from the Departments collects behind the Government and this dominent Federal Council. The Chancellor, whose place is at the corner of the Government "table" nearest the President, is always shepherded by his political aide-de-camp, Dr. Wahnschaffe. ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... my campaign. I made war upon Voltaire, Beranger, Eugene Sue, De Balzac, George Sand, Victor Hugo, Michelet, Quinet; and as for the small fry of literature, I showed them no mercy. War was soon declared on me,—war ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... however, that these elastic fruits reach their highest development. There they have to fight, not merely against such small fry as robins, squirrels, and harvest-mice, but against the aggressive parrot, the hard-billed toucan, the persistent lemur, and the inquisitive monkey. Moreover, the elastic fruits of the tropics grow often on spreading ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... thinking of about having service in the workhouse while the church is being enlarged. If he agrees to attend service there once or twice, the other people will come. Net the large fish, and you're sure to have the small fry.' ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... is there for. But when you look at the combinations, and the dropping-off of roads that have been drained, and the scaling down in refunding, and the rearranging, and the strikes, how much chance do you think the small fry stand? I don't doubt that Henderson will make a big thing out of it, and there will be lots of howling by those who were not so smart, and the newspapers will say that Henderson was too strong for them. What we respect nowadays are ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the man to trouble himself about such small fry of conspirators as this. The dean was taken to Upsala and thence to Stockholm, where he was kept in confinement, though with every comfort, until the rebellion incited by his father was quelled. Then the king, taking into account his brothers' loyalty and his own insignificance, freed him and ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... me—take me next, Sandy!" A dozen little voices cried this at one and the same time. There was a scramble, bursts of laughter, followed by a sharp rebuke from Sandy. "No, you don't either. Stand back, you small fry. No shoving!" ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels
... a bath; the uncleanliness of the offices; the hard narrowness of the sofas; the small basins, or rather bowls, and the tiny towels like napkins; the clamorous pets of the small fry, cats and dogs; the crowding of second-class passengers on the quarter-deck; and the noise of the Armenian lady beating her maid, who objected to the process in truly dreadful language: throw in an engine which, despite the efforts of her energetic English engineer, ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... very much indebted to you for the boom you are giving me; it is of distinct value to me, and I appreciate it. I send you herewith a number of my verses that have appeared this week in my column. Having done my work ahead I am rusticating in great shape and have become a veritable terror to the small fry in which the lakes of this delectable locality abound. My books will be issued about the first of August; they will be very pretty pieces of work; I shall send you a set at once. My western verse seems to be catching on; I notice that ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... from the centre of the city, which in my boyhood were fields and meadows, are now laid out into streets and covered with houses and shops. Indeed, I sometimes feel very aged when I look upon places where as a boy I went fishing for small fry, and now find the river that afforded me such juvenile sport is, owing to the enhanced value of laud, compressed into the dimensions of a fair-sized gutter, with houses and small factories closely packed on its margin covering ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... Then, if you watched sharply, you would see gleaming points of light, the eyes of Chigwooltz, stealing out, with barely a ripple, to the edge of the pads. And then, when some big feeding trout drove the minnows or small fry close in, there would be a heavy plunge from the shadow of the pads; and you would hear Chigwooltz splashing if the fish were a larger one ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... attack were the brothers Stolberg, for their narrow religiosity; Friedrich Schlegel, for his bumptious self-conceit; and various small fry for this ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... Gilles urged, "many and many a fellow goes in and out of Paris without a passport. The rules are a net to stop big fish and let the small fry go. What harm will it do to my Lord Mayenne, or you, or anybody, if you have the gentleness to let three poor servants through ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... All the savings of a month, the hoarded halfpence, the new farthings, the very luck-penny, go off in fumo on that night. For my part, I like this daylight mockery better. There is no gunpowder—odious gunpowder! no noise but the merry shouts of the small fry, so shrill and happy, and the cawing of the rooks, who are wheeling in large circles overhead, and wondering what is going forward in their territory—seeming in their loud clamour to ask what that light smoke may mean that curls so prettily amongst their old oaks, towering ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... set forth the small fry of her stock in hand, and when she was purged of her little iniquities, she came to the ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... birthday, had melted down now to reasonable proportions. The second and third cousins had retired, flushed and gratified, to obscure dens from which they had emerged, and the castle housed only the more prominent members of the family, always harder to dislodge than the small fry. The Bishop still remained, and the Colonel. Besides these, there were perhaps half a dozen more of the closer relations: to Lord Belpher's way of thinking, half a dozen too many. He was not fond of ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... formed; in 1715-20 appeared his translation of the "Iliad," and in 1723-25 that of the "Odyssey," for which two works, it is believed, he received some L9000; afterwards, in 1728, appeared the "Dunciad," a scathing satire of all the small fry of poets and critics that had annoyed him, and in 1732 appeared the first part of the famous "Essay on Man"; he was a vain man, far from amiable, and sometimes vindictive to a degree, though he was capable of warm attachments, and many of his faults were due to ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... which Kingsley, or Mr. Ruskin, or some other master of our decorative school, have described—much more one which has fallen into the hands of the small fry of their imitators—and you are almost sure to find that ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... Moffatt's strength and keenness, but with a vague doubt as to the "straightness" of the proposed transaction. Ralph had never seen his way clearly in that dim underworld of affairs where men of the Moffatt and Driscoll type moved like shadowy destructive monsters beneath the darting small fry of the surface. He knew that "business" has created its own special morality; and his musings on man's relation to his self imposed laws had shown him how little human conduct is generally troubled about ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... might be looked for in the rivers of the south, rather than those fishes known in the rivers falling eastward. It was important to ascertain at least what point of the coast separated the rivers containing different kinds of fish. In these ponds we caught only some very small fry, and the question could not be satisfactorily determined, although the natives declared that none of them were the ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell |
